Humanities

Articles from Vol. 33, No. 5, September/October

A Roundup of Activities Sponsored by the State Humanities CouncilsARIZONAThe Yuma County Public Library hosts its "Making Sense of the Civil War" reading and discussion series from Sept. 15 to Dec. 8.The Hassayampa Institute at Yavapai College in Prescott...

How a feathered serpent god presided over a forgotten golden age of Mexican artWHEN THE CURATOR JOHN POHL was a teenager building props and sets for the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, he also became obsessed with a very unlikely "storyboard" - the Codex...

Endowment-Supported EventsShortly after immigrating to the United States from Barcelona in 1881, Rafael Guastavino and his patented tiling system greatly influenced architects and craftsmen, first in New York City, then throughout the country. This unique...

Alter egos loom large in this issue of HUMANITIES. Lesser known sides of major figures, major events, and even a major period come in for a closer look. Our cover story tells of a beautiful and spirited exhibition delving into the cartoonishly modeled,...

THE BASKETBALL COURT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND'S Comcast Center teemed with middle and high school students here for the closing ceremony of the National History Day Contest. Music blared, flags waved, and inflatable oreas and dairy cows cavorted...

GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS NOT BORN A LEADER, BUT HE CAREFULLY MADE HIMSELF INTO ONE.ON JUNE 22, 2012, FOR $9,826,500, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association purchased George Washington's personal bound copy of the Constitution with the Bill of Rights and Acts...

WITH KATHFRINF R1NNFPut on your walking shoes. For this edition of \Q we're trekking around Rome with Katherine Rinne and surveying the fountains that give the city its distinctive character. Rinne, an independent scholar, used two NEH fellowships to...

DIGITAL LIBRARYNEH has awarded a $1 million grant to help launch the Digital Public Library of America, a project to make the content in America's great libraries and archives available free online. To be created through a coalition of libraries, archives,...

A CENTURY AND A HALF AFTER HIS DEATH, Henry David Thoreau's literary output continues unabated, with new versions of his work still in progress. That work has shaped the career of Elizabeth Witherell, who joined the staff of the Thoreau Edition in 1974...

RHODE ISLAND IN 2010, WILLIAM RICHMOND TALBOT WAS rummaging in the attic of his Cincinnati, Ohio, home when he came across an old cardboard box tied up with string and marked "Hearthside." The box had been stored in basements and attics of Talbot family...

Saying you're going to the Smithsonian while visiting Washington, D.C., is a little like saying you're going to read the Bible over the weekend. So, when you hear somebody say that they viewed the AIDS Memorial Quilt on the National Mall this summer...

VIRGINIA "HE'S VERY MUCH an American success story," University of Richmond professor Laura Browder says of 1970s novelist Forrest Carter. "He's really a testimony to the power of self-invention."Browder is the executive producer of The Reconstruction...

LOUISIANA "ARTISTS REQUIRE PATRONAGE," WRITES Michael Sartisky in A Unique Slant of Light. This new book from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities aims to cover the evolution of two hundred years of art in the region, marking Louisiana's bicentennial...

NEW JERSEY THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE CEASED LONG ago to have the world's longest span. Its towers are far from the tallest among bridges. Its volume of traffic is not the highest. Its cost of about $35 million - raised by local bonds, not federal grants...

STRIDENTISM: MOTORS AND WINGS INCLUDEDIn December 1921, a young poet named Manuel Maples Arce from the cosmopolitan port of Veracruz penned and distributed a manifesto in Mexico City calling for "an overthrow of outdated aesthetic forms comparable to...

Authenticity versus exoticism in operatic performances can be a fine line, especially when it involves nineteenth-century French representations of Spain. Emma Calvé's interpretation of Carmen, in Frenchman Georges Bizet's opera by the same name is a...

ON THE MORNING of October 16, 1962, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy arrived in President John F. Kennedy's bedroom bearing bad news. Photographs taken by a U-2, a high-flying reconnaissance plane, showed evidence that the Soviet Union was building...

THE CIVIL WAR DIVIDED AMERICANS INTO KINDS OF PEOPLE...David W. Blight tells an amazing story on camera in Death and the Civil War. It's about the origins of Memorial Day, a story that Blight, one of several historians interviewed in this documentary,...

THE U.S. CAPITOL AS WE KNOW IT TODAY WOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED WITHOUT JEFFERSON DAVIS. IN MANY WAYS, IT IS HIS BUILDING.JEFFERSON DAVIS, LOVE HIM OR HATE HIM, was an unusual man. During a long and frequently cataclysmic life, his favorite job, according...